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Thanks to the Israeli accessibility law, I have to delete my websites

lifemichael.com

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Re: Thanks to the Israeli accessibility law, I have to delete my websites

#241

Post by cush »

Any sort of regulation around web accessibility is so much more nuanced than building a ramp up to a restaurant, having the right clearance under a sink, or offering braille menus. It's orders of magnitude more complex in scale and requirements.

I'm positive that, in general, the web needs to do so much better when it comes to web accessibility, but we might not be ready for regulation without a lot of guardrail around what types of sites are regulated. At least start with government sites, education, etc. and work out the kinks first.

Re: Thanks to the Israeli accessibility law, I have to delete my websites

#243

Post by [deleted] »

Spivak wrote: post #239
themitigating wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello Texas abortion law

That law is from a purely legal perspective, wild. It doesn’t at all matter the specific issue, this law grants standing for someone to sue who is not harmed nor even involved in an act [1]. This is genuine perversion of the law and we are going to regret not immediately closing this can of worms. This law literally allows the government to end run around all federal and constitutional protections including state con…

[deleted]

Re: Thanks to the Israeli accessibility law, I have to delete my websites

#244

Post by endominus »

ryandrake wrote: post #158
mywittyname wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the issue is less about the changes they need to make, and more of the spectre of a potential lawsuit. Lawyers have a distinct upper-hand here because they are doing this in bulk and are probably using this as more of a "side-gig" to fill in extra work hours that they can't otherwise bill to clients. So the opportunity costs for them are pretty low, basically court fees, but the potential earnings are pretty…

I have sympathy if your site is fully compliant with the law and you get sued in error, because of some bad automation or something. Now you have to hire a lawyer and eat that cost having done nothing wrong. It would be best if this didn’t happen. But if the law specifically says web videos need captions, and you put web videos up without captions and subsequently get sued… I dunno what to say—Surprised Pikachu Face?…

I have multiple issues with your argument, but the most pertinent in this case is that the law in question was passed only 5 years ago and apparently applies retroactively to all video content hosted on Israeli sites. This is the government deciding that the video you put up ten years ago can get you sued for failing to have a requirement they just passed. It imposes a financial and temporal burden on everyone and the actual, practical effect of it, in this case, is not to increase accessibility but reduce it - by reducing everyone's ability to access these learning materials.

Re: Thanks to the Israeli accessibility law, I have to delete my websites

#245

Post by anigbrowl »

Entinel wrote: post #64
anigbrowl wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't it be wiser to organize for reform of the law (in concert with disability advocates) than to throw the baby out with the bathwater?

Do that before or while you get sued for violations? I think you should organize for reform of the law but it doesn't change the fact that in the meantime you'll be getting sued by 100 lawyers for violations.

I'd be surprised if there weren't any way to escape liability for by compliance within a reasonable timeframe from when a complaint is first made. This sort of thing is a predictable overhead for a business, and this firm has had a disability compliance statement since 2016 so it's not a wholly new concept to them.

It seems equally possible that they decided for business reasons to scrap their free tier offering and used this as an excuse to do so.

Re: Thanks to the Israeli accessibility law, I have to delete my websites

#246

Post by ad404b8a372f2b9 »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #210
ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a dichotomy, the third option of making your website accessible is right there within their reach. Them putting their hands up and saying "guess we'll do nothing" is not evidence that they couldn't have. I could have done that with two interns over a summer in 2017, I've done much larger labeling projects with fewer resources. Had they even thought about accessibility before being called on it, they could even ha…

>"they could even have done it over time as they were recording the videos, surely they put resources into that." If a professor is lecturing a class that has no disabled students in it, does it really make sense to hire someone to sign or transcribe the lecture on the off chance someone disabled in the future who isn't even enrolled will want to watch it for free online? I can totally understand requiring the univer…

Does it make sense to build a ramp in a building which has currently no wheelchair-bound residents? There is a reason access to higher-ed is so difficult for the disabled.

You don't need to hire someone to transcribe a lecture, you can push it through a speech to text algorithm and ask one of your 300 students to volunteer to make the few corrections necessary with a minimum amount of work. And this is the forethought you have when you care about these things. If you don't you can do the harder version where you hire a couple interns to do it afterward. It's not an insurmountable task either way.

Re: Thanks to the Israeli accessibility law, I have to delete my websites

#247

Post by tasuki »

themitigating wrote: post #180
no_butterscotch wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a disabled guy in the Bay Area going around suing all sorts of restaurants and other places if they didn't have ramps. Small hole in the wall restaurants couldn't afford renovations and had to just close, resulting in more Mc-chain restaurants moving in that can afford to play ball. Disabled people need access, but I (perhaps controversially) don't think they need access to 100% of the things. I'm reminded…

If you're handicapped you don't expect to be able to go hiking. However you do expect to be able to go to restaurants

Each and every restaurant?

I agree we want the world to be fair. I recently went through a difficult situation, during which my partner was unable to visit restaurants, even if they were wheelchair accessible. Was that fair?

What about people who can't financially afford going to a restaurant? Is it more fair to exclude someone on the basis of their financial situation rather than based on their physical disability?

Btw, I love hiking. If I were to become disabled and not be able to go hiking, I'd miss it more than going to restaurants. Is that fair?

Re: Thanks to the Israeli accessibility law, I have to delete my websites

#248

Post by xbar »

themitigating wrote: post #183
baggy_trough wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The disabled litigant is of course bottom feeding scum, but the real fault is with the law itself.

No, the fault is the person who abuses it. That's a choice. The law wasn't created with abuse in mind and while you could claim it should have been written better That's just a mistake. Only one party here is purposeful in their actions

Maybe the law isn't well written.

Re: Thanks to the Israeli accessibility law, I have to delete my websites

#249

Post by TheNorthman »

Vt71fcAqt7 wrote: post #218
themitigating wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're handicapped you don't expect to be able to go hiking. However you do expect to be able to go to restaurants

Why do you expect that?

I mean, aside from the obvious principle of reasonable accommodation guaranteed by the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities?

Or, perhaps more specifically the guarantee from Article 19, barring segregation from the community at large?

Expecting the declarations on human rights to be followed is not unreasonable.

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